Summary
If you get very sick or badly hurt and need help right away, you should use emergency medical services. These services use specially trained people and specially equipped facilities.
You may need care in the hospital emergency room (ER). Doctors and nurses there treat emergencies, such as heart attacks and injuries. For some emergencies, you need help where you are. Emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, do specific rescue jobs. They answer emergency calls and give basic medical care. Some EMTs are paramedics - they have training to do medical procedures on site. They usually take you to the ER for more care.
If you or someone you know needs emergency care, go to your hospital's emergency room. If you think the problem is life-threatening, call 911.
Learn More
- Going to the Emergency Room (For Parents) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
- How to Handle an Emergency (For Kids) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
- Recognizing medical emergencies (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
- Rural Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Trauma (Rural Health Information Hub)
- Teaching Your Child How to Use 911 (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
- What You Need to Know in an Emergency (For Parents) (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
- When to use the emergency room - adult (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
- When to use the emergency room - child (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
Clinical Trials
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ClinicalTrials.gov: Emergency Medical Services
(National Institutes of Health)
Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine)
- Article: Point-of-Care Testing Practices, Failure Modes, and Risk-Mitigation Strategies in Emergency Medical...
- Article: Association of Prehospital Plasma With Survival in Patients With Traumatic Brain...
- Article: Excess Out-of-Hospital Mortality and Declining Oxygen Saturation: The Sentinel Role of...
- Emergency Medical Services -- see more articles